Metro overview, all trades
Home-service contractors in Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA
The Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA metro area has 2,223 home-service contractors across 11 trades, or 30.16 per 10,000 residents.
The largest trade here is other home service, with 1,330 records and 59.8% of the metro’s home-service total; the smallest with any record at all is pool, with 6.
Against Iowa’s own rate per resident for each trade, Des Moines-West Des Moines carries more pest control contractors than the state average. It carries fewer electrical, HVAC, plumbing contractors than the state average.
Among the 3 Iowa metro areas this site carries, ranked by records per ten thousand residents in Des Moines-West Des Moines's largest trades: it is the thinnest of them for other home service; it is the thinnest of them for landscaping; and it is the thinnest of them for HVAC. The field is the metro areas this site publishes rather than every one in Iowa.
The facts for Des Moines-West Des Moines
- Home-service contractors in this metro
- 2,223
- Per 10,000 residents
- 30.16 per 10,000
- Trades with at least one record
- 11 of 11
- Records first appearing in the last 12 months
- 55
- Records flagged closed in the last 12 months
- 1
- Independent, franchise, corporate
- 2,143 independent, 38 franchise brand, 26 corporate owned, 16 awaiting chain review
- Universe quality
- 0.76% of source records merged as duplicates, 1.17% carry no street address
Sources and dates: Foursquare Open Source Places, release August 11, 2026. Population 737,164, Census Bureau Vintage 2023 population estimates, as of July 1, 2023.
Row definitions: methodology page.
What these numbers say about Des Moines-West Des Moines
Other home service is Des Moines-West Des Moines's largest trade, and more than half of every record this site holds here sits in it. It holds more than three times as many records as landscaping, the next largest.
In order, Des Moines-West Des Moines's four largest trades are other home service, landscaping, HVAC and roofing. Other home service alone reaches half of every record on this page.
All eleven trades carry at least one record in Des Moines-West Des Moines. The smallest of them here is pool.
Des Moines-West Des Moines's three smallest trades are pool, pest control and flooring. Between them they still hold a workable share of the metro.
One Des Moines-West Des Moines trade, pool, falls below the record floor a trade page has to clear, so it is answered on this page instead. Its count in the table is unchanged.
Per resident, Des Moines-West Des Moines carries fewer home-service records than Iowa as a whole, across all eleven trades summed together.
Against Iowa's own mix, Des Moines-West Des Moines is heaviest in pest control: that trade takes a far larger share of this metro than of the state.
Electrical is thinner in Des Moines-West Des Moines than across Iowa, the mirror of the lean above.
Read per resident, the top of the table does not move: other home service, landscaping and HVAC are Des Moines-West Des Moines's three densest trades, and pest control its thinnest.
No Des Moines-West Des Moines trade carries a measured licensed share, so every row of that column reads as not published rather than as zero.
No licence issuance or lapse figure is published for Des Moines-West Des Moines, so no churn figure appears here rather than a zero standing in for one.
A median hourly wage is published for plumbing, electrical, HVAC and roofing in Des Moines-West Des Moines. Of those, plumbing pays the most and roofing the least.
Cleaning, flooring, landscaping, other home service, painting, pest control and pool carry no wage figure for Des Moines-West Des Moines, so those rows are blank rather than filled from a neighbouring occupation.
Electrical carries Des Moines-West Des Moines's largest published employment count: the occupational series counts 2,870 workers across the metro, and this site publishes 92 electrical records here. The two count different things, one an occupation across every employer and the other the businesses on this site, so they stand side by side rather than one against the other. Plumbing, HVAC and roofing follow it.
Of the Des Moines-West Des Moines records that are not independent, franchise brands outnumber corporate-owned locations and concentrate in flooring; the heaviest corporate-owned trade here is roofing.
Within Des Moines-West Des Moines, electrical and HVAC are the most independently held trades and pest control the least.
Almost none of Des Moines-West Des Moines's records are waiting on chain review, so the independent, franchise and corporate counts here describe nearly the whole metro. Painting holds what little of that bucket the metro has.
Cleaning is the Des Moines-West Des Moines trade whose records most often carry no street address, and pest control the one whose records most often do. What a blank street line means is set out on the methodology page.
More Des Moines-West Des Moines records first appeared over the last twelve months than were flagged closed, so the file for this metro grew. Pool added the largest share of new records and roofing lost the largest share to closed flags.
The cities inside Des Moines-West Des Moines that differ from the wider metro enough to carry pages of their own are Urbandale, West Des Moines, Ankeny and Clive. Each of them carries one trade.
Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA sits inside Iowa alone, so the labour market this page counts and the licensing regime that governs it are the same geography.
Ordered by population, the metro areas either side of Des Moines-West Des Moines on this site are Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway above it and Provo-Orem-Lehi below it. Those are the metros closest to it in population.
Ordered by records per resident rather than population, Des Moines-West Des Moines's neighbours are Baton Rouge and Kansas City. A metro can sit high on one of these orderings and low on the other.
Every trade in Des Moines-West Des Moines
| Trade | Contractors | Per 10,000 | Licensed share | Median hourly wage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleaning | 85 | 1.15 | Not published | |
| Electrical | 92 | 1.25 | Not published | $30.21 |
| Flooring | 74 | 1.00 | Not published | |
| HVAC | 142 | 1.93 | Not published | $30.11 |
| Landscaping | 175 | 2.37 | Not published | |
| Painting | 79 | 1.07 | Not published | |
| Pest control | 53 | 0.72 | Not published | |
| Plumbing | 82 | 1.11 | Not published | $36.08 |
| Pool | 6 | 0.08 | Not published | |
| Roofing | 105 | 1.42 | Not published | $23.80 |
| Other home service | 1,330 | 18.04 | Not published |
Wage occupations for this metro area: Electricians, Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters, Roofers. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 OEWS, published May 15, 2026.
One trade, pool, has fewer than 8 publishable records here, so the old pool URL for this metro redirects here. The methodology page sets out what the floor is for.
Cities inside Des Moines-West Des Moines with their own page
| City | Trades | Records covered |
|---|---|---|
| Urbandale | other home service | 97 |
| West Des Moines | other home service | 94 |
| Ankeny | other home service | 84 |
| Clive | other home service | 76 |
The gate a city has to clear is on the methodology page.
Home-service contractors in Iowa carries the boards and the consumer-protection route for this metro’s first-named state.